Are landscapes seen from afar not virtual ? I can hardly see a thing but colour anyway, unless it’s on a screen near me soon.

The shrinking field of view, that particular scene affects me - that bird I couldn’t save. The cat too fast and ants have spread the word. Life abounds around death.

I join in, giving up on quality to make believe I’m really there though I was there.

Inflation and deflation of an avatar that was death before processing. Death gets pregnant by Deformation.

The avatar, as the persona, is a battlefield.

I’m what eats me.

Distress grabbed."

(Fau Ferdinand)

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Fau Ferdinand, a.k.a. Yael Gilks, is an established Second Life performance artist, who has produced memorable works since her entry into SL in 2004. Her work manifests metamorphosis of life, often dealing with the theme of life and death, from one state of existence to another, in a manner almost expressed as surreal. Dissolving in fluidity, her subjects enter her world through the dreamscape which surrounds her Self.

During her residency at Yoshikaze, she has taken a step into a new direction, in which video/machinima proceeds not only as a mere documentation of her virtual performance but as a hybrid medium of the virtual and videoart for which she expands her theme as the end result.

Between 23 - 27 January 2012 at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, Yoshikaze is pleased to present her first independent videowork "Bird Funeral" which she has completed during her Yoshikaze residency. In addition the exhibition offers an opportunity to experience two additional derivative videoworks, into which "Bird Funeral" with the elements from the virtual world has metamorphosed itself through the techniques of moving image.

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with HUMlab. The poster designed by Beatrice Rosberg at HUMlab.

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches. For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

My 2008 Second Life interactive sound installation "N00sphere Playground" is being relaunched on the Japanese sim Amatsu as part of the Japanese annual festival between 15 October and 13 November in Second Life. In conjunction, a new work "Seduction" is also being launched on the same sim.

"N00sphere Playground" was commissioned by TaggingArt in Copenhagen as part of Virtual Moves exhibition at the National Gallery of Denmark. Since then it has been permanently installed on HUMlab sim hosted by Umeå University in Sweden. Now the work is re-installed on Amatsu sim for the festival, together with my new work "Seduction.""Seduction" is a new SL installation that contains interactive sound objects. As the visitors interact with them, they leave their traces behind. As in "N00sphere Playground," avatars' interactions with the sound objects create subtle nuances in sound composition, from silence to various volumes, each time different in its polyphonies.More info on the works can be found here: http://goodwindseiling.blogspot.com/2011/10/official-announcement-of-seduction-and.htmlThe two works are linked for the festival (from "N00sphere Playground" to "Seduction") but can also be visited separately:

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presentsNOETIC GRACE - FROM IMAGE TO IMAGO by Katerina Karoussos5-9 September 2011@ Umeå University, SwedenOpening Hours: 8am-4pm WeekdaysOpening: 5 September Between 2pm-4pmArtist Talk at the Opening via Video Skype at 2pmCurated by Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with James Barrett at HUMlab

NOETIC GRACE - FROM IMAGE TO IMAGO "regards the process of 'virtual vision' such as St. John of Damascus yielded, back in the 7th century. It refers to a course of action that disregards the conventional way of viewing as it entertains the idea of intellectual vision which is beyond any sensory origin. The intellectual eye gazes without any supporting images to the image itself as an endoscopic procedure. In this context the noetic awareness faces all of what can be seen and unseen as epiphanies." (Katerina Karoussos)Katerina Karoussos' exploration into our noetic awareness in the virtual as our Yoshikaze artist between 20 May and 5 August this year has led her to step-by-step inquiries into "imago" of the virtual. Her residency has been a unique journey, for which her objective from the start was rather to conduct an in-depth examination of virtual vision than to produce work of art. With the concept of image as an apparition of our mind, her voyage consisted of a series of experimentations to better apprehend our new state, each unfolding a subtle rupture of our auto-responses from the reminiscent unconsciously employed. The process of her exploration has been thoroughly documented on our blog (yoshikaze.blogspot.com) and in a print-on-demand book from Lulu (www.lulu.com/spotlight/kkaroussosatgmaildotcom). Between 5-9 September Yoshikaze will proudly present a new video by Katerina Karoussos at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. This video puts together her observations in Second Life during her Yoshikaze residency as a singular work of art, and exposes the dimension of her philosophical concern by revealing her course of contemplation over our noesis on time, space, physical entities, natural phenomena, and body. The exhibition will be combined with her presentation at HUMlab at 2 pm on 5 September.Katerina Karoussos is an artist and researcher. Her research is based on the convergence of old and new media and especially between Byzantine and new media visual practices. From 1994 to 2003 she was the director and a co-founder of the Hellenic Center of Fine & Applied Arts. From 2004 since 2010 she was working at The Athens School of Fine Arts as a free lancer at the Fresco studio. She holds a Master of Arts from Middlesex University in Art & Technology Interdisciplinary Methods. From 2009, Karoussos is a member of Planetary Collegium (CAiiA) as a PhD Candidate under the supervision of Pr. Roy Ascott. She has participated in many international conferences (ISEA, Aber, Dimea, Consciousness Reframes Series etc). Apart from her work as a Byzantine mural painter at Orthodox churches her work has been exhibited in various international media exhibitions (Athens, Japan, Madrid, New York, Frankfurt, Montenegro, Cuba etc).Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches. For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University.

Curated by Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with James Barrett at HUMlab

"CONSTRUCT is a 75-day project performed during Selavy Oh's residency at Yoshikaze/HUMLAB. Selavy Oh was present every day adding one cube representing one day to the installation. The resulting installation built of 75 cubes, most of them reacting in various ways to the presence of visitors, can be conceived as collection of dynamic time capsules, a spatial blog or diary, that transforms time to space and thus breaks up the inevitable causality of its development by folding it to a multidimensional ensemble allowing for novel relations between its constituents. Moreover, the single days continuously exchange their positions, resulting in an everchanging labyrinth of cubes - some days even becoming inaccessible - which allows the visitor to discover new connections and associations that go beyond formal or semantic similarity." (Selavy Oh)

For the HUMlab RL exhibition, Selavy Oh adds another dimension to her inworld installation by exposing codes she has employed for the construction of her work. By letting a code represent each day of her residency in the same manner as her inworld cubes, Selavy Oh's CONSTRUCT conceives a highly conceptual artwork, in which multiple representations can be cross-referenced and examined via a thread of a day, revealing creative process of interconnections, transformations and even contrasts between virtual construction, subjectivity and the behind-the-scene hardcore coding.

Mab Macmoragh from Soup/Lovers Lane Studio has kindly contributed with a 23-minute-long beautifully edited machinima of CONSTRUCT to the RL HUMlab exhibition. Mab Macmoragh's thirty-seven "mini" machinimas, each depicting various scenes from Selavy Oh's inworld installation, are online and can be viewed at SL: Selavy Oh's construct: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mabmacmoragh/sets/72157626065546768

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches. For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

Hz (www.hz-journal.org) #16Quantum Improvisation: The Cybernetic Presenceby Pauline Oliveros"It's already evident that computers and human intelligence are merging. What would I want on a musician chip if I were to receive the benefit of neural implant technology? What kind of a 21st Century musician could I be?" Composer/musician and one of the key figures of electronic music Pauline Oliveros' essay from 1999 centres around the question by revisiting 100 years of music history since the first magnetic recording in 1899.Moistmedia, Technoetics and the Three VRs by Roy AscottOne of the most influential theoreticians/artists in the filed of telematics Roy Ascott's article about Moistmedia, written in 2000, in which he predicts "a convergence of three VRs" (Virtual, Validated and Vegetal): "At this interspace lies the great challenge to both science and art: the nature of consciousness. A technoetic aesthetic is needed which...may enable us as artists to address the key questions of our time."Grains of Gold in All This Shift: Web 2.0, Crowdsourcing and Participatory Artby Amanda Wasielewski"The Web 2.0 ideas of 'social networking' and 'crowdsourcing' have filtered through to the art world where artists are, whether consciously or not, using Web 2.0 principles and forms in their work." Amanda Wasielewski's critical examination over the recent activities of participatory art both on and offline which "begins to look like crowdsourcing."Dynamic screen / room:by Thore Soneson"During the last decades moving images, video and screens have expanded from on-the-wall projections to dynamic and multi-modulated images in different spatial settings – on multiple screens, in dynamic and interactive room environments and in an immersive physical context." Film maker/producer Thore Soneson's research into the contemporary "dynamic screen" for his project "Journey to Abadyl".

First Museum Shootersby Mathias Jansson"When the small company id Software in Texas, USA, 1993 released the videogame Doom few would have guessed that this game would change the entire game industry, and even fewer would have guessed which impact Doom would have on the art world." Game Art specialist Mathias Jansson's article about "museum shooters" in the field of Game Art.SONOMATERIA: Audio-tactile Composition by Irad LeeIrad Lee, sound and interaction designer, "describes the inspiration and implementation of SONOMATERIA, a multi-user sound sculpture, installation, tangible sound interface and intersensory composition," which "aims to explore the mutual reinforcing effect that the manipulation of tactile and auditory perceptions can have on each other...."---------------------------------------------Hz is published by Fylkingen in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen has through the years dedicated to introducing yet-to-be-established art forms. For more information, please visit: http://www.hz-journal.org/n4/hultberg.html